Home again, jiggety jig

[firstfrost]

We're home from Christmas in California. harrock has already told a lot of the good stories, but I enclose here a picture for the people wondering about the mysteriously lit thing with the 3 on it. And some bonus nieces for extra cuteness: It was all fun, and very relaxing. A year ago, Isabelle was mostly an item card; she's grown up into a toddler with her own personality, which seem quiet and reasonably independent. Amelia has gone from talking in sentence fragments to whole (and sometimes kind of funny) sentences: "I'm trying to find a good surface to put the ketchup on." She also has picked up the complaint "That doesn't make me very happy!" which I have to imagine was originally used for things like "Don't hit Mommy in the nose, that doesn't make Mommy happy" and has now been co-opted for things like "If my pie isn't warm, that doesn't make me happy!" I can see why parents might have once just stuck with "Because I say so!"

The return trip involved a lot more being stuck in Oakland; happily, we were rescued for a while by ricedog, izmirian, and merastra, who took us to a Chinese restaurant with a whole bunch of things I had never had before (I was not courageous enough for the tendon with sea slug), and then we saw merastra's work and I got to play my first game of Rock Band, which was awfully fun, and even harrock deemed it More Fun Than He Expected. And yay, I even mixed seeing friends with seeing family, which I never usually do. :)

Our Oak->JFK / JFK->Bos flights had been replaced by an Oak->Bos redeye when the first leg of the original flight was delayed for two hours. As it turned out, the second leg of the flight got cancelled. As a strange little coda to the whole thing, I got a phone call from JetBlue earlier this afternoon telling me that yesterday's flight had been cancelled. I found this somewhat inexplicable - the circumstances in which I'd both need to know that yesterday's flight was cancelled, and not already know, would seem to be fairly limited. ("Got struck by amnesia in NYC and eligible for a refund" might be one...)

Oh, and:

Comments

Courtesy Calls

[ironrat.livejournal.com]

United did something similar to me when they cancelled my DEN -> BWI flight, and called me to let me know they had rebooked all of my flights to the next day. Of course, I was in the air on my way to DEN when they called...

[merastra.livejournal.com]

That was a fun evening. I'm glad we got to see you. :-) Rah for electronic communication and last minute visitations! I'm glad you guys got back ok. I considered buy a copy of Rockband after the first time I played it. And we don't even own a current retail game console.

Oh, and that new Orthanc photomorph is *awesome*! ;-)

Re: Courtesy Calls

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

Heh. My first thought in response to that was "Denmark? When was ironrat in Denmark?" Too much Diplomacy, or something. :-)

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I have a green headed mallard just like that!

[kelkyag]

I'm not sure the daylight photo makes Door #3 any less mysterious. :)

Three cheers for nieces of great cuteness, and mad gingerbread architecture!

[mijven.livejournal.com]

I'm still partial to the low-tech photo though.. the one using hands to reinact the action!

[countertorque.livejournal.com]

And yay, I even mixed seeing friends with seeing family, which I never usually do. :)

You should try to do that more often and with more planning. We were at my inlaws that evening :(